I’m the sort of person who is either all in, or all out. I don’t do half measures.
Sometimes, life might be easier if I did. But I bore easily, feel things deeply and resent needing to sleep.
So it won’t have been a surprise to anyone who knew me, that when it came to having children, presuming I was lucky enough, I was always going to have loads.
I have wondered if you can be addicted to having babies. I’ve even asked others with more than a socially acceptable number of children (that’s three max, in case you were wondering), if they ever thought this might apply to them. The thought crossed my mind that it may have applied to me. The “my family is complete feeling” never came, no matter how quickly the minibus was filling up. Nothing in my life ever compared to the excitement and happiness of having a baby, so why wouldn’t you chase that high?
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That’s not to say it was all easy.
On the road to having seven children, I had four miscarriages. I thought I’d go insane with grief the first time. In spite of the initial intense highs, I had postnatal depression after six of the seven children. I judged myself relentlessly for that. I still don’t like to talk about it. And there was so little sleep. Funny how much more appealing it becomes when it’s denied to you.
Sleep-deprived delirium can foster its own energies, though, so I wrote a book in between pacing the floor and breastfeeds.
Like I said, I bore easily.
The dark clouds of postnatal depression eventually lifted. I still quietly remember the four I lost.
And now, I’m your woman with all the kids. I didn’t end up accidentally here, mind. Seven was always the plan. Though life teaches you quickly that’s not quite how having babies works. “Why so many?” I’ve been asked. “For content,” I explain.
Plus all the best families had seven kids: the Waltons; the Von Trapps in the Sound of Music; and erm, the family in 7th Heaven. And also it’s the maximum number of children (and husband) I could drive around in my Transit, without having to apply for a different category of driver’s license. Because doesn’t everyone factor that in?
But anyway, back to being your woman with all the kids.
In a way that’s quite different to dads, mothers are defined by parenthood. We’re stay-at-home mothers or working mothers. Yet, we never hear of dads described as working fathers. Dads are not fodder for debates about which option is better for children. Being a man and being a father can coexist. Motherhood, on the other hand, can swallow our identity entirely.
It can be both complimentary and reductive in equal parts. We’re the best thing since toilet roll in the middle of a pandemic, when Mother’s Day comes around. But just a mammy when our perspectives and experiences are to be undermined or dismissed. Sometimes, being a mammy can be such a distraction that it makes people forget why we’re there in the first place.
[ We couldn’t afford Rome due to our ridiculous number of children. Galway it wasOpens in new window ]
Such as an occasion when I, alongside a male colleague, took part in a slot on a national radio show to discuss a new study. I, there in a professional capacity, was introduced to the listening audience as a mother of seven. My male colleague, as the journalist – both he and I were. I wish I could say this was a unique experience.
Still motherhood has been an education like no other. To quote the great Gloria Delgado Pritchett in Modern Family, “I am not a natural homemaker”. Turns out growing multiple people does not change that. Also living in a house with so many boys is a fundamentally different experience to growing up in a house with all sisters. You can ruin a small child’s day by not cooking their frozen waffles in the air fryer for long enough. And raising teenagers can be way harder than people admit it to be. Especially ones that are similar in personality to you.
You are only as happy as your most unhappy child is probably the truest statement ever made.
That homework is a waste of time comes a close second.
And those sewing lessons that you took a feminist stance against aged 11 because the boys in class got to play football while the girls had to learn the running stitch, eventually come in handy, when you realise, five minutes before the school run, your son split the arse of his school tracksuit bottoms, again, doing slide tackles the day before.
I am mother, hear me roar.
And not just at my kids when they’re melting my head.
That’s also mama bear mode activated, should anyone ever do anything them.
